Live in Europe: Next gen XPS 13 developer edition

A couple of weeks ago we announced the worldwide release of the Ubuntu-based mobile Precision mobile line as well and the US availability of the next gen XPS 13 developer edition.

Today I’m happy to announce that the Skylake-based XPS 13 developer edition is now available in Europe!

Background: As you may remember, as a part of Project Sputnik, these systems began as an open-ended exploratory project to identify what developers wanted in an ideal laptop. With the community’s input, Project Sputnik became an official product and continues to evolve.

Next gen XPS 13 developer edition specs

6thGeneration Intel® Core™Processors

Preloaded with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Augmented with the necessary hardware drivers, tools and utilities

InfinityEdge™ display, FHD and QHD+ versions available

Configurations

The following configurations will be available both online and offline in Europe. All of three of the XPS 13 developer edition configurations come with the Intel wireless card.

i5/8GB: 256GB, FHD, Intel 8260

i7/8GB: 256GB, QHD+T, Intel 8260

i7/16GB 512GB, QHD+T, Intel 8260

OTA (Over-The-Air) Fixes

There were several minor fixes that were not available in time for launch but have been made available as over the air updates so make sure to run all Ubuntu updates. (These fixes pertain to both the XPS 13 and Precisions.)

Where to order your system

The following, URLs will take you to the product pages for the developer edition in the various countries. The countries listed below will offer the XPS 13 online.

There is a second group of nations where the developer edition is available by contacting your local Dell representative. We will be adding that list, along with URLs, in the next couple of days. – Update: added April 8

151 Responses to Live in Europe: Next gen XPS 13 developer edition

I tried my best to buy a dell xps 13 with qwerty but because I am based in Belgium I cannot buy on Dell Netherlands or Dell UK. After prolonged emails back and forth with Dell support I finally gave up. I am still pissed off that something so simple is not possible.

Big thanks! My argument to Dell at the time was that Belgium and Brussels has so many expats, citizens of the world, used to qwerty (with the rest of the world), so why not make it a choice but I did not get any further than “Sorry”. I will share the good news as soon as it becomes reality.

I just managed to order the laptop with US international keyboard going through the French website. However, as xps_wtd said, the website signal an incompatibility and you cannot actually order it online. I had to go through the Dell’s selling service, but it went very smoothly. And I was also offered a cheaper price than what is displayed when following Barton’s link … 1028 HT rather than 1149 HT for the i5 version …

1) I’d love to see a i5/16GB combination, 256 or even better 512 GB SSD.
2) I’m missing an USB-C to DisplayPort cable in the Dell Store, for connecting the XPS13 to an U2711 without any adapters inbetween.

Will the 1080p model have content adaptive brightness control? And if so, will it be possible to turn it off?
Also, will the Linux patches for the hardware be available upstream, or only in Ubuntu? I would like to use a different distro if possible.

[…] Dell offers OTA (Over-the-Air) updates for the XPS 13 Developer Edition series, so when your laptop arrives, make sure that you apply all the available updates, because it ships by default with several minor issues that could not be fixed in time for its launch. To get your XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop right now, please visit today’s announcement. […]

As a disappointed owner of a new XPS 13 from 2015 (a real mistake to buy it) but happy ex-owner of an old XPS13, I am wondering :
– did you fixed all the problem of the 2015 version? (especially all the things you asked us to fix manually like, mouse clicks, trackpad, wifi, hibernation, etc)
– and are you going to stop shipping it in a few weeks/months b/c it is too faulty without doing anything to sad owner of the broken device you sold (again like 9343)?
– Did you changed the wifi card to allow a free kernel (problem since the 1st version)?
– Did tails live key worked again on it (like on the old one)?

To sum up : is it a waste of money and time as your last one (9343) or a decent one like the old XPS 13 dev ed?

Hi Mina, I feel for you, since I’ve had a very bad experience myself about a year ago. My 9350 DE DevEdition arrived yesterday, and my first experience is what I’ve had hoped for last year already:

– boot and OEM setup went without any troubles
– touch pad presets are great, I just adjusted pointer acceleration
– keyboard has no issues with repeated/double keys
– sound works
– wifi works
– upgrade worked

there are two minor things so far:
– adaptive contrast is present, I found no bios setting to disable it.
to me it is however a minor issue.
– idle power consumption is >5W, this used to be 2.5W in 9343!
– two keys ‘r’ and ‘b’ are really hard to press and sometimes key presses get omitted. this is a mechanical problem. I need to hit the center of the key in order to receive an char.

Since keyboard is a very crucial part for me I’ll continue testing/typing and decide in a couple of days whether or not I will keep the device.

Can you inform the sales team about this, so that they hopefully will include the VAT in the price or lower the price without the VAT, so that the DE will be cheaper, as it supposed to be, than the normal Windows Edition?

The XPS13DE was the best computer I ever had. But it was stolen some 15 months ago.
Since then I have been patiently waiting for a chance to buy a successor.
I have only some simple requirements:

* Ubuntu or other flavor of Linux pre-installed
* swiss german keyboard
* payment in BitCoin

So far I could not figure out how to place that order. And slowly I’m losing patience.
Can anybody from Dell make a statement about when the BitCoin payment option will be rolled out to Switzerland? If not I’ll probably order a Purism, even though I like the XPS13DE better.

I was, as you, really happy of my old XPS13, and it has also been stolen. Thus in 2015 I bought the “new” XPS13 and it is REALLY dysfunctional: I spend my first two days fixing basic stuff (like mouse click, WIFI, etc.) and some stuff still does not work properly (like closing your laptop without specifically telling him to hibernate will make it partially crash). They decide to stop to sell it a few months later (b/c of all the problems) but no commercial gesture have been done for people, like me, who already had one and are stuck with a faulty device…

So I recommend you to wait for tests and analysis of this one before buying it. Just to know wether it is as great as the 2013 version or as bad as the 2015 one.

@ulrichard i checked with the European team and unfortunately this is the response: “in line with our focus on identified customer needs and subsequent development priorities, etc, we currently dont have plans to expand our implementation of BitCoin anywhere across Europe. However, we will continue to review what our customers are asking for and the status of payment tools in the ecommerce market.”

A couple of months ago I bought the Dell XPS 13 laptop and I spend almost 1 weeks to fix all the Linux related issues (wifi, bluetooth, touchpad, etc).

After a week I decided to re-install Windows because the display keeps flickering every 4-5 seconds. I tried all suggested fixes/updates that I found on the internet. There was not only version or kernel which fixes all my XPS 13 problems. Ubuntu 14/15/16, Linux mint, kernel 4.3/4.4/4.5/latest dev…

So hopefully all the issues are fixed and we can download some drivers/updates for the non-developer XPS 13 laptop.

I have just received an XPS13(9350,i5,FHD,256GB,8GB RAM) and just updated to Ubuntu 16.04 beta/rc (packages as of 2016/04/17) using the usual procedure (update to latest 14.04 software and then sudo update-manager -d). The same things are working as before (hotkeys, WiFI on/off; suspend/resume). I am really happy with the laptop so far.

Now I am looking for a dock (I will try the WD15, order is already placed)…

Is there any intention to offer a non-touchscreen model in the US like there is in Europe? If so, when approximately would that happen? If I could get a matte screen model, I’d buy an XPS 13 immediately.

What about PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) on the FHD version? Will we have to suffer some screen flickering at low light levels? is this even implemented on the FHD version? I don’t understand why such a harmful feature is in a device with such price (and the fact that the QHD version does not have it means that Dell is discriminating the users that need/want the FHD version).

Hi Barton, I just noticed the German price for the FHD version is without MwSt (VAT), making it much more expensive than the standard consumer edition. It’s 1159 EUR without MwSt, 1379.21 EUR with MwSt. Is this intentional?

Also, can Dell please add a USB-C to DisplayPort cable (not adapter) to the accessory section? I’d like to order both in one go. (I have a Dell U2711.)

I just heard back from our European team. Here is our finance person’s response:

“Observation of the customer is correct re consumer vs business pricing. The Delta is ~€130 excl. VAT, which represents the 1YR ProSupport that is included in the commercialised offer, but not in the consumer offer.”

Say, is there any difference between the consumer and business versions, other than the pro support?
Can’t spot any in the details, just want to make sure I’m not just being blind and missing something before placing an order.

Thanks, we appreciate this. We’ve been chasing pre-instaled Dell Linux laptops for some years but from Dell Portugal it never worked, even when listed on the website. We would probably have purchased more than 10 over time, but not on a single order.

our team in Portugal said that you should be able to order individual XPS 13 developer editions. Let me know if you’ve had any luck since you posted. If not please let me know how you contacted Dell Portugal and i will go back to them and asked again.

Luis in Dell Portugal said he can help you out directly. For an email, should i use sales@solidangle.eu (not sure if you feel comfortable posting your personal email on the blog.)? Also, if you are on twitter, you can DM me your email my handle is @barton808.

There is a obvious gap in the configuration line-up: why not also offer a i7/16GB 512GB, FHD, Intel 8260 model? I bet I not the only one who would rather have a higher-spec machine with no touch screen and a significant boost in battery life. It would also slot naturally into the $1000 price gap between the i5 model and the current least expensive 16GB RAM model.

Hey Barton, thanks for making this possible. Just got my xps 2016 with Ubuntu and I’m very impressed so far! Small problem I encountered though, which I haven’t been able to solve with updates. When I close the lid the machine goes into suspend mode, but when I open it up again, the screen will light up for a few secs but then go black again which leaves me with no other option than to do a hard reboot. Is there a way of solving this issue?

On second thoughts… even worse off now. The computer will come out of suspense, but thinks an unknown audio-device is connected. Rebooted and now the whole soundcard is not detected anymore (only lists dummy audio). This is very frustrating guys, please advice!!!

Hi Barton! I am so happy that this is all happening right in time for me to purchase a new laptop. As a biologist I know next to nothing about coding, but love Ubuntu! I noticed that the Microsoft Store is offering the 9350 to students for very cheap and was wondering whether I could simply install 14.04 LTS on it and have it working (more or less) out of the box? It has the Broadcom wireless card, I think… Would anything else be an issue?

Any advice would be super appreciated as it would literally save me hours of googling!

Any idea why Dell cancels orders without any notification at all? I ordered my Ubuntu precision 2 weeks ago… And it was ‘in production’ till today… Now my order appears as cancelled and my order number is invalid! Can’t contact dell online cause they ask a valid order number and calling them is a nightmare as they send me from one automatic choice menu to the other…

Just thought I’d leave a follow-up here. Through twitter they told me my order was ‘order was cancelled due a Pending Process Payment Hold from PayPal’ – pretty strange since I used online banking from their own store – not PayPal – to pay it and the money was transferred from my account about 2 weeks ago. From what I can see in the payment details is that orders go through ‘Global Collect BV’ – maybe something went wrong there… I did a bit of reading on the internet and apparently there’s other people reporting issues with Dell & Global Collect. I’m hoping to hear from Dell soon.

Dieter, I heard back from our team in Europe and to track it down they need your order number. Let me know if they dont get back to you with regards to config investigation or if you want to have me work it on my end as well.

So I now got a reply, but only saying there was a configuration problem and my order got cancelled…. looks like a standard automated reply. I don’t get it, why offer configurations if you can’t supply it? I don’t know what the problem was, though the person I spoke yesterday told me something with SSD boot… Anyway, the number was 623200890. I’d love to order a configuration that works at some point. I have serious reservations going through Dell’s buying process now.

Thanks. It would be good to know if the problem on the site has been resolved. As far as I can tell I can still order the same specs… I obviously don’t want to face this again. I also don’t understand why dell doesn’t notice the problem and suggests a different configuration if the ordered o e doesn’t work – but then again why sell it in the first place. Seems dodgy.

Then, in dutch… which translates more or less to: ‘There is no phone assistance available for a re-booking. U can try again on the website but I am not sure if it will work this time. I started the refund process, this can take 3-7 days….’

After a while of usage of the XPS13 (9350, FHD) under vanilla Ubuntu 16.04, I found one annoying keyboard problem: Whenever I press two keyboard modifiers (e.g. Ctrl + Shift) at the same time, there is a significant chance one of the two key down events doesn’t get recognized. If I press the keys one after another, it works reliable. This is very annoying for invoking shortcuts. The effect can be reproduced easily in “gkbd-keyboard-display -l de” (replace de with us for U.S. keyboards).

I’m not able to get XPS13 Developer Edition in Czech republic even though there is official webpage (which is linked here). Nobody contacted me from Czech division of Dell for almost a month. I’ve used official contact form on Dell’s site several times but nothing happened. Because I’ve started to be desperate I also tried to contact some local vendor which are distributing Dell’s products but it seems Developer edition is somehow forbidden here in Czech republic. Is there any hope I could byu it? Thanks in advance…

if Jiří is looking for a config with i5 / 8GB RAM/ non-touch FHD / 256 SSD, he can approach Sales on phone and request XPS 13 configuration “DINO1701_5123_SPC” immediately. QHD+ with consumer/commercial i5 and i7 should be available by next Tuesday / Wednesday latest.

wonderful… I definitely want QHD+ with i7/16GB/512GB so I’ll wait to the next week…

I used the contact form on the page linked in this post. I don’t know how to contact Dell sales directly in the Czech republic.

I also contacted local vendor Axes Computers (http://axes.cz/) and they said Dell offered them (after week of waiting) only two i7 configurations, both with 8Gigs of RAM. No 16GB version with US keyboard layout is available according to them.

Just received the 9350 16GB UK edition. Battling to replace Unity with Gnome by (1) installing gnome-shell (2) replacing current installation with ubuntu-gnome. (1) doesn’t seem to work atm (session won’t start following gnome-shell installation) and for (2), ubuntu-gnome boots, but wifi isn’t there and i fear I won’t be able to find it. I found this: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=4NTWR offering drivers for the previous model. Is there an equivalent page for 9350? I.e.: somewhere I can download the drivers?

Great work so far, just wondering when the dell 13 xps developer edition will be available in Australia? I’ve been patiently following for a number years now and really want to purchase one in Australia. Can you shed some light on what the hold up is?

Our first XPS13 order has arrived fully working. Amazing product and great integration of Ubuntu. Congratulations.

But I’m sad to report that I’m still unsure whether the commercial offer actually exists or if somehow you just pushed Dell Portugal to allow a single purchase.

After I ordered the laptop from Dell’s recommended partner TCSI (www.tcsi-digiberia.pt) and because I am aware of existing demand I shared the information about the availability of this model with a number of partner companies and people.

It happens that every single request for quotes from these other parties was turned down by partner TCSI who claimed “We only sell laptops with Windows”, without any further information – I know like half a dozen cases so far of parties who complained back to me after my recommendation.

After I brought this problem to TCSI – “how is it possible that you refuse orders from other interested customers?” – they told me that they were instructed by Dell Portugal to reply in such a way. And that they are only allowed to sell Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu to our company (solidangle.eu).

So you see, for TCSI to explicitly refuse business from a number of potential new customers, against its own commercial interest, there seems to be a very strong statement from Dell Portugal to constrain the sales of this product. And in the past, account managers at Dell Portugal have given us the exact same answer they instructed TCSI to give customers on every new request (“we only sell laptops with Windows”).

So, we are not talking “we need authorization from Dell to sell you that model”, “you need to contact Dell yourself”, “you need to be a company…”, etc. The public statement for every interested party is clear: “the product doesn’t exist in Portugal and we only do Windows”.

Even though there is no hard evidence on the actual reasons for this behaviour, from an external observer’s point of view all signs of boycott to a global strategy are present. How much does it look like a clash of agendas?

I could certainly be quiet and enjoy the opportunity of (due to shady circumstances) being the only company in Portugal with access to this amazing product. But that doesn’t sound fair to everyone else in the country, does it?

As you might guess I carefully considered the pros and cons of making this information public. But at the end of the day I can’t imagine a single legitimate business reason for Dell Portugal to put such an explicit effort on killing the demand for one global Dell product.

I’m sure many engineer jokes have been written about “how many account managers does it take to kill a product?”. Sadly, the ongoing situation is neither a joke nor the product has a chance to survive under these conditions.

Gustavo, thanks for your report about Dell and Portugal, the situation is quite similar here in Finland, where Dell and other OEM are selling only Windows preinstalled laptops and dekstops and when asked why this is so they have replied that their company policies mandate them to support and offer only Microsoft/Windows in their products and that they are not allowed to even tell interested customers that Linux or other #opensource or free OS:s run fine in their hw. This is all because of Microsoft whose monopoly and dominance over nearly all equipment manufacturers (laptops, PC:s, desktops and even Tablets) is full and absolute. I’m also pretty sure that Dell (at least in some regions) receives considerable monetary support and funding from Microsoft and that there strict contracts and NDA’s that force Dell to offer only Windows as the official OS in their hw and to deny the availability or support for Linux and other #opensource OS:s.

This is just another case in the long history of Microsoft hating Linux and it’s total control in the consumer and biz markets over OEM’s and companies. Even if ppl want and ask for Linux desktops or laptops, the manufactures are not allowed to sell their hw w/ Windows in them because Microsoft practically owns them. Even these Dell XPS DE’s where Linux is pre-installed usually cost much more than their Windows counterparts cause probably Dell has to pay Microsoft a full Windows license anyhow, to be able to sell the hw w/o it to customers.

This is not “just another case in …”. The XPS 13 Dev Edition is part of the global Dell portfolio and was launched officially both in Portugal and in Finland (as per the post above where you can find the links to the product page).

And it is an awesome product.

If the local “account managers” refuse to sell it to you in Finland they are going against a global strategy and that calls for clarifications.

Regarding price: price is a complex variable influenced by many more factors than just software licensing. It has to do with scale, support, certification, etc. I don’t find the price inappropriate for something that is kind of a gourmet product – this laptop is not marketed as a money saver, but rather as a high end productivity tool.